Abstract

In Legality, Scott Shapiro – a leading legal positivist – analyses the problem of a wicked legal system in a way that brings him close to natural law positions. For he argues that a wicked legal system is botched as a legal system and I show that such an argument entails a prior argument that there is some set of standards or criteria internal to law which are both moral and legal. As a result, the more successful a legal order is legally speaking, the better the moral quality of its law, and the more it is a failure morally speaking, the worse the legal quality of its law. It is such moral features of law that Shapiro concedes make it plausible to account for law’s claim to justified authority over its subjects. However, Shapiro cannot, as a legal positivist, accept this entailment. His book thus brings to the surface and illuminates a central dilemma for legal positivism. If legal positivists wish to account for the authority of law they have to abandon legal positivism’s denial that law has such moral features. If they do not, they should revive a form of legal positivism that specifically abjures any claim to account for law’s normative nature